


Lily of the Valley

by Imagining_in_the_Margins



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Agent As Unsub, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Assault, BAMF Spencer Reid, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Dark, Doctor/Patient, Drug Use, F/M, Flowers, Forbidden Love, Gun Violence, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Kidnapping, Knifeplay, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Murder, Past Character Death, Pregnancy, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Rape/Non-con Elements, Restraints, Rough Sex, Sad Spencer Reid, Semi-Public Sex, Slow Dancing, Smut, Spencer Reid Angst, Spencer Reid Needs a Hug, Spencer Reid Whump, Spencer Reid as Unsub, Strangers to Lovers, Tranquilizers, Unplanned Pregnancy, Unsub | Unknown Subject, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:53:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29219775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imagining_in_the_Margins/pseuds/Imagining_in_the_Margins
Summary: Unsub!Reid. Spencer was found guilty but mentally ill after the torture and murder of several men. He finds solace in his psychiatrist at the institution.
Relationships: Spencer Reid/Reader, Spencer Reid/You
Comments: 15
Kudos: 87





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warning: Unsub!Spencer, institutionalization, state hospital, forced sedation/tranquilizer use, Doctor/Patient, Major Character Death (not shown), Mentions of death/murder. 
> 
> The major character death referenced is several unnamed members of the BAU. There will be more significantly Unsub!Spencer in Parts 2 & 3, as well as two sex scenes. Bon appetit.

What makes a monster? Some would say it requires evil. Others would argue psychopathy boils down to a matter of nature vs nurture. But as someone who dedicated their life to understanding them, I’ve never found a simple answer. I am confident, however, that monsters are not born that way. They are created through pain, torment, and greed. Whose suffering is another question entirely.

That is why when searching for a new life, I chose this state hospital. It wasn’t the scent of the dogwood trees or the safe suburbs that drew me in; it was a patient.

His name was Spencer Reid.

I had heard of him before I’d come, but only ever in generalities and newspaper articles. I wish I could say that it was normal scientific curiosity that drove me to him. I wish I could convince myself that it was boredom and the perfect combination of conditions that brought us together.

But that wasn’t what happened. The truth was that I threw myself into his life without much thought at all about what it would mean. I heard the story of the tortured agent turned mass murderer and I wanted to know him. There were few things in this world that would drive a man so clearly defined by his honor to abandon all faith in the system he helped defend. The brutalization and death of the ones he loved was reason enough.

I wasn’t supposed to sympathize with him, but I did. That wasn’t like me, either. I hadn’t even met him yet, but I saw something in mugshots and journal entries that wove a fantasy in my mind that was so clear that I started to mistake it for reality.

Of the two of us, I wondered which was really more out of our mind.

It was raining the first day I laid my eyes on him. He sat idly on a couch, only half covered by a blanket as he stared out the window. At least, that was what I thought he was staring at. But upon closer inspection, his eyes were trailing after each individual droplet that hit the glass. He followed them all the way to the bitter end, where they all pooled together and dripped out of sight.

“Hi, Dr. Reid,” I said with more trepidation than I’d hoped, “Do you mind if I sit here?”

He didn’t answer. That much was expected— he hadn’t spoken in over a year. The rumors say the last words he’d spoken were when he requested a guilty plea, but attorney-client confidentiality made it impossible to know for sure.

Still, I expected him to at least acknowledge my existence. Even just a slight shift of his eyes from the windowpane. I waited for a second, but when it didn’t come, I took the seat beside him anyway.

“I know you already know who I am, but it feels rude not to tell you,” I chuckled at the sound of my voice that spoke more to the pane in front of us than the man beside me. “My name is (Y/n). You don’t have to call me Doctor.”

As if he would call me anything at all. I inspected the statuesque man beside me to try and understand anything about him. The first and only indication I saw that he was still alive was the gentle, rhythmic rise and fall of his chest.

“I have a feeling you don’t need much of my help. So, if it’s alright with you, I’d like to just sit with you,” I explained, finally turning to look at him when I spoke again. “It’s a nice break to the day, no?”

Then it happened. Slowly, like breaking from his stone casing, Spencer turned to face me. That enough to make my heart race. His eyes almost made it stop completely.

What I knew to be toffee brown eyes seemed almost black in the overcast light, and they burned through me with an intensity so overwhelming that I was grateful to be seated. If I had been standing, my knees surely would have buckled under the weight of his gaze.

I looked away, if only for a second to catch my breath, but his eyes remained. I took it as a challenge, and although it was regrettable, I wasn’t ready to meet it yet. My eyes and my mind flickered back to the window.

“I wish there was a way to enjoy the rain outside without getting wet,” I said through a sigh. The energy between us shifted again, and the challenge waned to wariness. I knew that because I was looking at him again, drowning in the reflection of the window caught in those shark-like eyes.

“And don’t tell me to carry an umbrella, because I always get soaked even when I’m holding one,” I joked. That is, if you can still call it a joke when neither of us laughed.

I smiled, but he remained seemingly stoic. The only thing that gave him away was the briefest twitch of his hand that rested on top of the blanket. I only saw it from my peripheral, but I was absolutely certain that I had seen it.

I wondered what he might look like when he smiled. I wondered what his voice would sound like when it was mixed with laughter. I’d never heard his voice before, but I still questioned whether it would sound sweeter when made after the darkness he’d endured.

Would he sound like a monster? It seemed unlikely. He didn’t look like one.

I sighed again at the thought, but I think he could tell this time it was born out of frustration rather than humor. I looked away from him in order to maintain any semblance of sanity and professionalism.

“Although…” I started to mumble, “Maybe getting drenched is part of enjoying the rain.”

Spencer moved again, his eyes joining mine at the window. Just as he looked away, I looked at him. The first thing I noticed was that his eyes were no longer fixated on the droplets, instead, they stared further out to the clouds rolling over the horizon.

The second thing I noticed was that his hand had clenched around the fabric stretched over his lap.

I don’t know how long we sat there, silently tracking the layout of the sky. What I do know is that at one point I nodded off to the lullaby of rain and distant thunder. When I awoke Spencer wasn’t there. However, draped over my shoulders was the same blanket that he had held onto like a lifeline.

It wasn’t raining anymore.

—

The nurse’s station was busier than usual, and if you’ve ever met a nurse, you know that is saying a lot about the current status of the hospital. But for all its frantic commotion, their words were whispered.

As I approached, I recognized the pharmacist among them. The pieces were starting to come together as an eerie hush fell over the space at precisely the same moment my presence became known.

“Dr. (Y/l/n)?” she started hesitantly.

“Yes?” I returned, trying not to look as nervous as I felt under the scrutiny of far too many eyes. It only got harder when she lifted the chart in her hands.

I knew whose it was. I didn’t even have to ask.

“Is this order… correct?”

“Why do you ask?” I shot back in a rather defensive manner. I’d write it off as the cutthroat demeanor required of women in my field, but I think we all knew there was more to it.

“You want to stop his antipsychotics?” she asked with a blatant disbelief that made my stomach churn.

“That’s right,” I said.

“… Why?”

The room felt smaller, or perhaps the others just felt bigger. I stared back at them with all the confidence I could muster, trusting myself to be able to at least explain my rationale. Whether or not they believed it or agreed with my reasoning was another thing entirely, but that wouldn’t be my problem. I knew what I saw in Spencer Reid, and it was not psychosis.

“I don’t think they’re necessary. A major tranquilizer is an extreme treatment, and I don’t think it’s warranted.”

I could hear the ticking of the clocks on the wall and the gentle humming from the computers. And as they looked at me in that silence, I felt an even stronger kinship to Spencer.

Was this what it felt like for him? Was this how we all looked at him? Was this what he saw whenever he looked to the only people available to him?

“You… you know what he did, right?” she asked, her voice filled with something more similar to rage than fear, “He hunted, tortured, and killed four men. Two with his bare hands.”

I held tighter to my clipboard to hide the way my hands trembled with a very similar emotion to the one she displayed.

“I’m not afraid of him,” I replied confidently.

“Yeah?” she mocked, “Well, you should be.”

Holding my head as high as I could, I ended the conversation the quickest way I knew how, “The order is correct. Stop the antipsychotics.”

As I turned to walk away, I heard the chatter in the background to my pounding heart. The clicking of heels broke through that noise. It reminded me of the rain.

—

It was sunny the next time I saw Spencer. I’d come to his room this time, since the nurses insisted that they were too afraid to put him in a position with the other patients without his antipsychotics.

Their fears seemed so silly when I saw him, though. There was absolutely nothing intimidating about the tall, lanky man dressed in the typical scrub-like uniform and rubber-soled socks.

I was so unafraid that I almost immediately pulled out my keyring, marched over to the window, and opened it the three inches the safety design would allow.

His eyes followed me the whole time, although he stayed seated at his desk. I didn’t look to see what he’d been doing. It felt rude to ignore that he might have been busy, but it also felt intrusive to peer into the only private thoughts he was allowed to keep.

So, I stayed at the window, taking in a small yet dramatic breath before I sighed.

“Even through my allergies I can tell that it smells like Spring.”

The only certain indication he’d stopped writing was the sound of the felt tip pen being placed on the desk. Of course, I also felt when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I could feel him looking at me, but I was too scared to look back. Instead, I just continued to watch the shaking leaves of distant trees.

“You know, a man asked me my favorite flower the other day,” I mumbled, knocking the tip of my shoe against the floor like it would maintain an appropriate rhythm to the story. “I think he was planning on buying me some, but cut flowers aren’t really my scene. I also have a terrible habit of killing houseplants, so…”

There was something in the breeze, the fresh air flowing into the room and shifting the tension into something new. I leaned forward towards the window and rested my elbow against it as I sighed, “Maybe I’m just not meant for flowers, Dr. Reid.”

I only jumped a little when his chair scraped against the floor, but I tried to maintain my position. Fear wasn’t the emotion that dominated my thoughts when I noticed his footfalls were coming closer.

I was… excited. That was the only way to describe the way my solemn smile turned bright when he simply stood beside me at the window.

“I’m not sure I could pick one favorite, anyway,” I posited, “Those kinds of questions are usually meant to figure out something about the person you’re asking, but I feel like I don’t know enough about myself.”

Call it wishful thinking or pure madness, but when I turned to Spencer, I noticed a new life in his eyes. But there was a scientific explanation for that, wasn’t there? I’d taken him off a major tranquilizer; of course he had more energy. But that wasn’t the only thing that I saw. There was some kind of intrigue, a fascination that was less morbid and more childlike in nature.

“I’m a terrible psychiatrist, aren’t I?” I asked with a quirk of my lips.

I swore he almost smiled. The twitch in his lip was so subtle that any other person might have written it off. But I was, first and foremost, a hopeless romantic.

“I wonder what someone else might tell me. How other people see me.”

It was bait. He knew it, too. His silence was accepted as an answer only because I saw the wheels turning in his head.

And then I realized that he’d come up with an answer. He had it hanging from the tip of his tongue, which he bit down on. I figured it simply wasn’t a powerful enough answer to justify breaking the silence. I could understand that. I wouldn’t waste my words, either.

Which is why I stood up as I asked, “Would asphodel be too grim for you, Dr. Reid?”

Just as I stood, he lowered himself into the position I’d abandoned. He gazed out the window so carefully that I had no choice but to believe he was trying to see the world through my eyes.

Yet in that moment, the only thing I saw was him.

“I mean, I know it’s supposed to mean ‘ _remembered beyond the tomb,_ ’ and is found in the fields of Elysium but does that have to be all it is?”

_Is that all that you are? A madman? A monster?_

“After all, Persephone found it beautiful enough to wear on her crown, and the roots sustained the shades.”

I didn’t see evil when he looked at me. I saw tears burning glazed over eyes. I saw wrinkles around his laugh lines and wondered how happy he must have been at one point to develop them. I heard the tension leave him in the form of a shaky breath that sounded just like the trees rustling under the stress of the spring breeze.

“It is a lily first, no?” I asked.

Spencer’s mouth opened. It was the first ever blatant display of a desire to share something with me. I quite literally couldn’t breathe. We locked eyes both filled with disbelief. He almost looked disgusted at his inability to control treacherous lips, but they stubbornly remained parted with breaths that gained speed with the wind outside.

I took a step back from him just as his mouth closed.

“Yeah, I suppose it is too bleak. Don’t listen to me,” I said with a small, nervous wave of my hand, “I’ll find another flower for you.”

I couldn’t explain why, but I felt the distinct urge to run. My legs trembled so badly I was convinced they wouldn’t be able to hold my weight any longer. So, I swiftly turned on my heels and bolted.

I almost made it, too. Freedom from the room and the hope for something greater was right in front of me. My hand was already on the turned handle when I heard it.

“Lily of the valley.”

I turned to the sound. It was a strained, scratchy sound of ill-used cords. It still sounded like music. The gentle thrum of an old record-player that was being played for the first time after years of gathering dust. Slowly and cautiously, my eyes met his as they burned through the specks and sparkles of the dust scattered around the room. It caught the light pouring through the window between us. Not a single one of his muscles so much as twitched as we stared at each other with an uncanny understanding. 

Spencer had never touched me, but I still felt his presence surround me like the sweetest embrace as he repeated softly but surely, “You’re a lily of the valley.” 

—

It was strange stepping into Spencer’s room again. Perhaps it was silly to think that so much had changed from a few words, but it really did feel that way. Like there was an entirely new man seated in the same chair, scrawling secrets with a felt tip pen.

“Good morning, Dr. Reid,” I announced with more confidence than usual, “I was hoping you might like to do something fun with me today.”

Spencer turned to look at me, cautiously but at a normal speed. Almost like he’d been waiting for me. Which, I suppose that was normal, considering it was my job to check in on him. But there was something in his eyes, beyond the somewhat apathetic stare, that told me he hadn’t just expected my visit, but _anticipated_ it.

It was a paralyzing feeling. My hands clutched tighter to the cardboard box in my hands until the silence stretched on too long to be comfortable. I suppose it was stupid to think he would always answer now just because he’d said a few words once.

The puzzle pieces clattered behind the cardboard as I held it up to display the front of the box to him with a frazzled laugh, “I’m terrible at them, but I figured you could help me. And if we finish it, we can glue it and frame it.”

I looked down at the picture just to avoid looking at him any longer. It turned out to be a mistake, because no sooner had my eyes left him had he stood from the chair and taken a step towards me.

“Don’t worry, we don’t have to hang it in here,” I continued, refusing to grant my desire to keep the distance between us that grew smaller with every second.

When Spencer did reach me, he still stretched out the silence. I listened to the way the floors creaked under his feet and his breath came out in a burst akin to a laugh. There was no doubting his presence was real and remarkable, but I still jumped when his knuckles brushed over my fingers gripping the box.

“I like Monet,” he said simply.

“Me too,” I mumbled back. 

Then, the way it always seemed to happen with him, time simultaneously sped up and slowed to a stop. As the two of us sat hunched over and silent, we scanned the one thousand pieces to hopefully find the one we were looking for. I tried not to linger on the way it felt like an analogy for us finding each other.

Instead, I just watched him work at three times my speed until I couldn’t contain the one thought running through my mind any longer.

“I wonder how different the world must look through your eyes.”

Spencer looked up at me, but he didn’t answer. He just let the very same eyes I’d spoken about roam over me like I was nothing but familiar territory before they fell away again.

I wasn’t satisfied with just a glance. Like an addict stuck on him, I chased after the high I experienced from the sound of his voice.

“Is it lonely?”

He knew what I was doing. With a sharp glance that felt a lot like a warning, Spencer also stubbornly refused to partake in my one-sided conversation. Naturally, I felt the need to defend my terrible and transparent attempts of getting closer to him.

“I only ask because if you were to say yes, then we’d have something in common. Beyond lilies, anyway.”

Spencer smiled in response, stopping the scanning of puzzle pieces to look up at me, instead. He didn’t stop when I started to show discomfort, either. In fact, he almost looked harder, standing just enough to drag his chair closer to me before he relented.

I hated the way it felt when he stopped looking.

“I could pretend like it’s my job’s fault that I’m lonely, but you’d know I was lying, right?” I blurted out, hoping to get stuck in those molasses eyes again.

But he didn’t even bother looking up to me as he finally answered, “You’ve never lied to me.”

“No, I haven’t,” I agreed. Then I waited. I waited for his hand to brush over mine in its pursuit of filling a void of pieces that had been cut and torn from their rightful place. I didn’t hold him or stop him in any way. I enjoyed that brief moment of contact with tensed muscles and shaky breath.

Spencer must have been impressed by my self-control, because when he looked to me, I could see a vague admiration and a pity in his eyes.

“Why would I lie to you?” I whispered.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t do much of anything. I had a feeling it was because he didn’t want to give anything away, but I couldn’t be sure. Who knows; maybe there was more to him than anyone had ever guessed. I also got a feeling that was true. They could tell me he was evil and cruel until their breath ran out, but I would never be able to see it like they said it was.

That was why I couldn’t look at him. I focused my mind on anything else that I could think of, trying to drown out the sound of his voice once more. So when a song came to mind, I let it take over all other thoughts that might have come.

I didn’t even realize that I’d started to hum until I saw him from the corner of my eye. He halted all movement at first before dragging his hands down to the edge of the table. From there, he tapped along with the familiar, solemn melody of _Swan Lake_.

I almost stopped as my lungs emptied at the sound of soft noises against the wood, but I managed to keep it up long enough to carry us to the conclusion. But as that final tone filled and fell from the air, Spencer’s voice began again.

“The first performances of Swan Lake were such a disaster that it almost ruined Tchaikovsky’s reputation. It didn’t become famous until after his death.”

I couldn’t stop myself from smiling any longer, no matter how hard I tried. And I did. I wanted him to think that it wasn’t a tremendous and life-changing thing to hear his voice, but I had also just told him what a fruitless effort it would be to lie to him.

“I wonder how he would feel knowing that Barbie made a movie of it,” I suggested with a bit of a giggle at the way he scoffed. Then, to add insult to injury, I tagged on, “I like to think he would love it.” 

“Doubtful,” he deadpanned almost immediately. He kept his straight face, but I could see the other emotions starting to spill into his expression in the most subtle ways. A twitch of his lip and a light shining through the almost obsidian eyes were all I needed.

“I’m going to have them convert the movies to VHS, just so we can watch it together,” I replied with my own cheeky but false seriousness.

“I think I’d prefer jail to that punishment.” 

It wasn’t until I pouted in response that Spencer actually, honest to god, _smiled_. He saw the puckered lips and knitted brow, and he felt the similar overwhelming need to share the joy it brought him. Unfortunately for me, that smile robbed me of any logical thought seconds later, leaving me once more victim to his desires. Whatever those might be.

“Fine. No Barbie movies,” I sighed, “But we could watch Swan Lake, though. If you want.”

With a small nod, Spencer’s eyes and smile dropped back down to their neutral position. His focus might have seemed to be purely on the puzzle, but there was no doubting the sudden and stark decrease in speed and accuracy that followed.

I certainly said nothing of it. But Spencer did in his own, unique way, because the next time that our hands were parallel, he paused, letting the shadow cast over me but refusing to look me in the eye.

“Are you afraid of me?” he asked, low and cold and not all vulnerable.

But regardless of the walls he’d maintained, my answer remained the same.

“No, Dr. Reid. I’m not afraid of you.”

That wasn’t the full truth, but it was the only part I felt comfortable sharing. Because I feared that if I told him everything, if I announced to the world the way my heart leapt at the very sight of him, I knew there would be no going back.

But then why didn’t I stop him when his hand slowly lowered and covered mine? Why did I spread my fingers to allow his to twine between them? I suspect it was for the same reason that the door to my heart remained cracked open to him, displaying a fireplace perpetually burning with the promise to protect him from the cold.

Whatever the reason was, it did not change over the course of the visit. If anything, our bodies only grew closer and our hands more comfortable sharing the space with one another.

When we did finally have to let go, we did it silently and slowly. We abandoned that comfort like a bitter goodbye, trying to prolong the contact with outstretched fingers and gazes that were too intimate to be excused.

“Have a good night, Dr. Reid.”

“You too, (y/n),” he said, and I prayed it wouldn’t be the last time I heard him say my name. 

—

There were some aspects of my job that were remarkably humbling. Usually they were terrifying, or at least very uncomfortable. But the day I came to hang a framed puzzle in Spencer’s room was an entirely different level of humiliating.

It wasn’t so much the action of climbing onto his bed in my bare feet as it was how much I struggled to do it. And of course, Spencer wasn’t exactly allowed to help me, considering the tools I had to use to hang the piece.

Truthfully, I’m not sure he would have helped me if I had given him the option. Because as I teetered back and forth with the frame much bigger than me, I swore I heard Spencer chuckle behind me.

“How does it look? Is it straight?” I asked when I finally managed to get the damned hook on the ever elusive command hook poorly affixed to the wall. 

“It looks wonderful,” he said. But even before I turned around, I could hear the grin on his face.

“You aren’t talking about the picture, are you, Dr. Reid?” I asked with my own little smile that I tried, and failed, to keep to myself. “Because it’s horribly crooked.”

“Crooked things aren’t that bad.”

He definitely was not talking about the puzzle.

I felt his presence before the floorboards creaked under his feet. Although I should’ve turned to him, I didn’t. I stared ahead at the frame that hung an inch too low on one side.

I should’ve turned around. It was irresponsible and dangerous for me to put myself in the position I was, only barely balancing on his bed while he stood mere inches away from me. But I didn’t want to. I wasn’t afraid of him. I wasn’t afraid of anything, really. It was almost like there was something in the air; something docile and warm and… gentle.

Gentle were his knuckles as they brushed up my almost bare leg. His palms went flat against my thigh, but he didn’t grab me yet. He just hovered there, allowing his body heat to seep through the fabric of my skirt and leave the skin beneath burnt with a memory of his touch.

I hadn’t taken a breath in so long, but I still couldn’t be certain if that was the reason that I was lightheaded. That drunken feeling was growing more and more common with every encounter.

It certainly wasn’t helped by the feeling of being literally lifted from the bed and back into his arms. My little yelp clearly amused him, but it didn’t encourage him to put me down. No, he kept me a few inches from the ground for a few seconds longer, undoubtedly enjoying the way I squirmed in his hands.

Once he did release me, I had a lot more to fix than my wrinkled coat. I cleared my throat to try and right the… _crooked_ thoughts on my head.

It didn’t work. He could tell.

“Thank you,” I mumbled, nonetheless.

“You’re welcome.”

“This might be the most talkative you’ve been yet,” I pointed out. Although he didn’t exactly smile, he did seem pleased with the observation. Almost like he hadn’t realized it himself.

“I guess you’re not as bad of a psychiatrist as you think you are,” he playfully, almost sarcastically, suggested. 

It wasn’t a laughing matter, though. He was trying to deflect from genuine and earned praise, and I wasn’t going to let him. “I’m not the one who should get the credit for your growth. It’s yours, Dr. Reid.”

But Spencer was smart. He knew that I was helpless to his touch. From the second his fingertips brushed over my cheek, I was his. All he’d done was tuck a strand behind my ear, and I couldn’t breathe under the weight of his stare.

Then he was gone; like he had never been there at all. Like he didn’t feel the way the air sparked with the tension between us, threatening to leave me a pile of ash in his hands.

He’d forced himself to move on from the moment, so I tried to do the same.

“Oh! I almost forgot to tell you. I put in a request for Swan Lake,” I called cheerily. When I was met with a distrustful stare, I clarified, “Not the Barbie version.”

It was enough for him to smirk. I’d wished it was a smile, but I tried not to be too picky in my demands.

“It’s been a while since I heard Tchaikovsky. I guess the institution agrees with the original critics that said it was too fast paced to be beautiful,” he replied.

Unbeknownst to him, the tidbit he’d chosen to share sparked a dangerous but fantastic plan. The kind of thing that should have never entered my mind at all. But once it was there, there was no getting rid of it.

“I have an idea!” I said too loudly for the little distance between us.

He didn’t mind. His eyebrows jumped in intrigue as his eyes tracked me through the room. He stepped closer when I pulled out my phone, tapping frantically on the screen to find what I was looking for.

By the time the music swelled for the second time, Spencer had caught on to my plan. The Waltz of the Flowers had filled the room so quickly, and this time I didn’t shy away from the realization that it was an analogy for us.

“Dance with me,” I offered, extending my hand for him.

Spencer rarely smiled. Granted he’d been doing it more as of late, but its rarity was not the only reason the sight robbed the breath from my lungs. It was the slight dimpling of his cheeks, the way those large, expressive eyes were hidden like there was no more room in him for the darkness they usually held. And when he took my hand, I felt a similar warmth bubbling through me in the form of a laugh.

With more force than necessary, Spencer tugged me forward until I crashed into him with absolutely no grace. He still caught me, though, quickly transitioning his hold so that his other hand was pressed against the small of my back.

We didn’t speak. Our bodies that had begun to sway to the sound did the talking for us. As the melody swelled, so did our laughter that continued each time we bumped into furniture in the much too small room that felt less like a prison with every note.

“I think he would have liked Fantasia,” I hummed. 

“I think that one is a closer call.”

The tempo waned, the song reaching its midpoint while the two of us drifted closer together. There was practically no space that remained, our stomachs pressed together, and our eyes firmly held with a similar intimacy. 

“Do you like the Nutcracker?” I asked, recalling the colorful sets and delicate movements that typically accompanied the song. I didn’t dare say it, but despite the beauty of ballet, I think I preferred ours.

“I love everything associated with Christmas,” he answered quietly. 

My hand on his shoulder gravitated to his neck before I could even think to stop it. My fingers wove between the curls that lined his face. For the first time since we’d started dancing, I looked away from those amber eyes, watching the way his pulse shifted the longer I brushed against his skin.

“I didn’t know that about you,” I returned with a shaky timbre of an unknown origin.

“I prefer Halloween.” The words were accompanied by his own movement, his face feeling free to move now that I wasn’t watching him. He pulled me closer, his hand on my back raising between my shoulder blades. His lips brushed over my ear as he whispered, “It’s the one day a year everyone stops pretending like they aren’t interested in monsters.”

“I never pretend. I made it my life’s work,” I said with a chuckle. If I’d had a clear head, I would’ve considered the implications. But there was nothing sensical about my thoughts with Spencer. Every single thing I’d ever learned left me swiftly and without reservation the moment he so much as looked at me.

Thankfully for me, he hardly seemed offended. Amused was a better word for it.

“Do you think that’s what I am?” he mumbled, his mouth straying from my ear to rest against my jaw, “A monster?”

“No.”

I couldn’t be sure if it was doubt or desire that made him retreat, but Spencer pulled back from our embrace. My face, though flushed, felt so much colder without him. But then he was looking at me again, scrutinizing every thought and feeling displayed in my eyes. Just like the first time he’d spoken to me, I felt his presence in the deepest recesses of my mind. I practically fell limp in his arms, but somehow maintained the wherewithal to repeat once more with feeling, “Not you.”

In that quiet moment where the music started to fade, he looked like he wanted to say something. His lip trembled, presumably from the weight of the words trapped behind it. I brought my hand to his cheek, resting my thumb over those same lips and wishing they would move. It was terribly selfish and naive, but I felt so strongly that if he could just say whatever it was, things would make sense again.

But then the song was over and a new one began, the jovial tune replaced by the sullen melody of October.

“They’re listening to us,” I said with a shy smile, my eyes falling down to our fingers intertwined. We were barely moving, but his thumb drifted back and forth against the back of my hand. It was almost hypnotic, and my eyes were barely open when I heard him speak again.

“Let them,” he said. 

We had no other choice, I reminded myself. While I was free to feel and leave, he would be locked behind me in a cell that I held only one of many keys to.

“You were born in October, weren’t you, Dr. Reid?” I asked, trying to find my way out of the terribly painful place I’d found myself while still in his arms.

“Yes.”

He said nothing else. He knew why I’d asked, but that didn’t stop me from saying it out loud anyway. From making it real. Resting my head against his chest, I listened to the gentle thrum of his heart. “It sounds so sad,” I stated without knowing whether I was referring to the rhythm of him or the song, “Is this how you feel?”

“That’s too simple a question for a psychiatrist as skilled as you.”

It was a safe answer, but it wasn’t a real one. He’d avoided the question, and in doing so, answered it in the positive.

This was how he felt. Trapped in a cage that I could free him of, Spencer didn’t ever try to fight me. He’d taken my hand and led us in a waltz in a cold, sterile prison cell. We moved as far as we could with the music, but we couldn’t be free.

I could go. I could leave him behind and find something else. But I didn’t want to.

“I’m not asking as a psychiatrist,” I said without anticipating the next answer I would have to give.

“Then why are you asking?”

“I just… wanted to.” It wasn’t a lie, but he didn’t accept it, regardless.

“Why?” he pressed. I knew there was no other escape besides the truth, so I gave it to him.

“I’m asking as a friend.”

Feeling Spencer’s laugh rumble against my chest was a new and exciting experience. Another reminder that not only was he actually here with me, but we were also close enough that there was simply no existing without impacting the other.

“We’re friends now?” he said, ending the question with a happy little hum, “You _must_ be lonely.”

“Less so when I’m with you,” I corrected. He must not have expected something so clever to be returned so quickly, because his laughter ended just as abruptly. And in that new quiet, I heard something else among the orchestra. I felt it, too. It was the subtle, gentle thumping of Spencer’s heart returning to the forefront.

“Do you feel it, too, Spencer?” I asked without clarification.

He didn’t need it, anyway. We didn’t need any more words at all, it seemed. Because once the question faded from the room, Spencer let go of my hand. It didn’t stay away for long, though, making its way to my chin and leading me back to him.

Although the distance between us closed fast, his lips were inexplicably gentle when they pressed against mine. It was a tentative and timid kiss; one full of insecurity and anxiety that I’d never seen from him in any other capacity.

He was showing me what he felt the only way he knew how.

He was lonely. Just like me.

And I realized then that there was nothing fair about any of this. There was no explanation for why a just world would abandon him in such a cold place. Those hands that clung to me as if I might float away were never meant to be lonely. He was never meant to be alone.

Spencer Reid was meant to be in someone’s arms. Preferably mine. I wanted to hold him until all of the pain faded so I could replace it with nothing but love. I tried to tell him when the kiss finally ended. I looked into treacle eyes and tried to sing his praise, but I was drowning in the bittersweet taste of his lips.

“You’re poisonous,” he whispered in unison with my thoughts, “You make me want to do unbelievably stupid things.”

I was almost too scared to ask, but the possibility of never knowing the answer felt equally paralyzing. So I did.

“Like what?”

But even with all of my training and the heaviness in my heart, I wasn’t prepared for his answer.

“Like fall in love with you,” he said with an honesty that couldn’t be questioned. With a hardness that did not allow for any bend. He told me that he _wanted_ to fall in love with me with no question or hesitation. Yet his hands fell away before I ever had the idea to run. And when my body sensed the freedom, it took it without a second thought.

I ran, abandoning my phone, my sanity, and my heart in the middle of his room.

I ran from him hoping that it would stop the desire that burned in every place he touched me. I cursed the world for being too quiet to drown out his voice. I hated the way the backs of my eyelids somehow still matched the color of his eyes.

I ran from Spencer Reid, but it didn’t work. Because from the second his lips touched mine, I knew he would always be a part of me.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spencer makes some decisions for the both of you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: Unsub!Spencer, public sex, penetrative sex, psychiatrist/patient, institutionalization, forced sedation/tranquilizer use, needles, kidnapping, displays of force/violence, rough sex

My life had felt differently lately. Not that it was a bad or regrettable thing. To others, the changes probably went unnoticed. They wouldn’t see the way my eyes followed rolling grey clouds in the hope that they might share their thoughts in the form of lightning and rain. They wouldn’t feel how my heart was in a constant state of fighting to be freed from the prison of my ribcage, searching out an embrace that I’d let slip through my fingers.

I didn’t try to hide it. I wore my emotions like embroidery stitched into my sleeve with contrasting colors. I wanted people to look. I wanted someone to notice how my life had been irreparably changed while no one else was watching.

But how could I be surprised by people’s ignorance, willful or not, when I was so acutely familiar with it before I ever met him?

The world had not suddenly closed its eyes to the happenings around them. When Spencer kissed me, it didn’t change the fabric of reality. All it did was change me. I became a version of myself that knew his lips and hands and heart, and with that, I found a freedom I wasn’t really certain what to do with.

All I knew was that I wasn’t willing to let it go.

“Good morning, Dr. Reid,” I said as confidently as possible when I entered his room. I found him exactly as I’d imagined I would, hunched over his desk with terrible posture and wielding a felt tipped pen. It was his way of telling me that he didn’t want to be disturbed, but I was stubborn in my pursuit.

“I have an outdoor activity planned for us, if you’re willing to join me.”

Whether it was myself or the freedom that attracted him, I decided it didn’t matter so long as I accomplished my goal. Because regardless of reason, he did turn to me. Only his eyes did not meet mine, instead resting comfortably at my trembling ankles.

“It’s just a walk in the garden. Would you like to come?”

The suffocating silence was broken by the creaking and scratching of his chair across the floorboards. My relief left me with a sigh that was quickly countered by what could only be described as a glare from the man who approached the door just to stop before he breached the threshold. His reminder to me that while I treated this like it was his decision, all I’d really done was offer him sunlight in exchange for my company.

There was no sense in trying to talk myself out of the guilt when I knew it was well-deserved. I let it consume my thoughts and drive my feet forward at what I could only hope was an ordinary pace. I didn’t want to give prying eyes a chance to even consider the possibility of anything untoward happening, knowing that if they knew the truth about how badly I wanted to grab his hand and run, they would never let me see him again.

But once we were bathed in the bright spring sun, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that Spencer might have preferred if they did rid him of me.

“Are we back on non-speaking terms, Dr. Reid?”

The question was answered before I’d even finished his name. In fact, once he heard the harsh consonant of his honorific, his nostrils flared, and his hands turned to fists. Verbal confirmation was not required to understand what he wanted to say.

“I suppose I deserve that,” I whispered through an awkward laugh that never really came to fruition.

Spencer continued on the same leisurely pace beside me, but with every passing second, it became increasingly obvious that he was the one leading us. And though I should have cared more about the supposed psychopath with a grudge leading me to an undisclosed location, I still found that my hands shook with something very different from fear.

“I brought you here to apologize, but I’m worried that it might not be enough.”

“Why are you apologizing?” he replied hastily, with his tongue only barely able to enunciate each syllable in time.

There were so many things to apologize for, but I knew that I didn’t have the time. If I did, I would curse every circumstance and person that led us to the shadow of the state hospital. But he didn’t want to hear about them in that moment. He wanted my surrender and submission. Two things I was willing to give in the form of a fumbled answer I already had memorized.

“For… leaving you like that.”

His features softened, his white-knuckled hand shifting back to its previous position, craned and waiting to be held.

“I honestly was just very overwhelmed, and I didn’t know how else to respond. I understand that I’ve violated your trust and crossed a boundary that was my responsibility to maintain, but I just— “

“What?” he interrupted with a harshness that rivaled the color of his eyes as the clouds shielded us from the sun. Like what would follow was something that shouldn’t be shared with the light of day. An omen to warn everyone that the two of us were lurking in the shadows.

“I…”

I couldn’t answer, my vocal cords apparently paralyzed by the way his hands found my hips and pressed my body hard against the brick. Even that wasn’t enough. Spencer wanted me to be trapped between every immovable force he could manage.

When his chest pressed against mine, he found nothing resembling a fight. If anything, my body went limp in the comforting cage of his embrace, knowing that he wouldn’t let me fall. Still, there was so much tension, so much rage that flowed through his bones and caused the muscles of his jaw to twitch under the pressure.

“Don’t make whatever comes out of your mouth next be the first lie you tell me,” he both begged and ordered.

What could I say? What words could possibly explain the way my heart tore itself into shreds with the guilt and anger over this entire situation? There was nothing to make up for the circumstances of our meeting. Of my falling in love.

But he looked at me, breaking past both of our insecurity and fear to once again find the only person in this godforsaken place that trusted the light that they saw within him. He tried to face that truth, to accept what he saw was really as simple as it seemed.

Much quieter, although not calmer, he ground out a few more words through still rusty cords.

“Are you scared of me?”

“Yes,” I answered. 

The single syllable shocked us both. It shouldn’t have. I felt his hands on me fall away only to return with a vengeance, gripping tighter in the hope that it might keep me with him longer.

But just because I was afraid of him didn’t mean I wanted to leave.

“Why?”

“Because you make me want to do stupid things, too,” I choked, unable to understand where I found the confidence to speak the unadulterated truth. Then again, there was nowhere to hide. There was no escape from the toffee irises that still shone in the shadows.

“You make me want them so badly that sometimes just thinking of you hurts,” I continued, snaking my hands in the little space between us so I could hold him the same way he held me. The friction against the fabric felt scorching. But like a stubborn child, I ignored all warnings and thrust my hands into the proverbial open flame.

Winding my fingers through his hair, I met the energy behind his eyes with my own overwhelming desire. I sucked in a sharp breath as his hands began roaming my sides, searching for any give in the fabric of my skirt.

“Do you feel it, too?” I whispered.

His confirmation came in the form of fingers hooking under my bottom hem, pulling the fabric up over my hips. The whole time, his eyes continued to burn into mine, refusing to look away for even a millisecond. I swore he didn’t even blink, endlessly consuming the sight of me falling apart with anticipation.

“Say my name,” he ordered.

“ _Spencer_.” It poured from me like a prayer, and I forced my lips to stop after just one recitation out of fear that I would miss the sound of his shaky breath as the gap between our lips started to close.

He was the one to close his eyes first. I could hardly believe it had happened, that he would be the one to submit first. But it didn’t matter — all that I could care about was the way his fingers stroked my inner thigh with feather-light touches that didn’t at all match the force with which he kissed me.

My head hit the brick, but I felt no pain. All I could feel was the butterflies soaring through my stomach at a nauseating pace. I felt like a foolish young girl who had indulged too much in the spirits her parents tried to keep locked away. But Spencer was worth whatever horrors waited for me on the other side.

My body accepted him like an extension of itself. There was no fear when I felt his knuckles brush against the soft cotton of my underwear. It was only the highest form of euphoria; the kind of pure ecstasy that made my jaw drop open to welcome him.

“Say it again,” he groaned into the open mouthed kiss. He wasn’t even capable of waiting long enough to remove the garment he’d encountered, simply shifting it to the side and using his finger to trace my folds. Then, just as I tried to speak his name, he thrust his fingers into me with an impossible amount of tenderness.

“ _Spencer_ ,” I said, the word more of a moan than anything else.

I tried so hard to only focus on the way he felt inside of me, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the expression on his face. It was a peculiar tranquility and patience I’d never encountered on any man before. With his eyes closed and his forehead resting against mine, he slipped another finger inside of me and began pumping into me at a pace that felt familiar.

A rhythm much like our hearts that beat back and forth between us. Our breath grew harder and faster to compensate, and I wholeheartedly accepted the delirium that followed. Even though I was armed with the knowledge that I was desperately low on air, I used what little I had to continue to praise him.

His name was the only thing I had. My most powerful weapon when it came to the two of us. It was the only way to remind him just how much of him he had given to me. This was not a one-way street. We were equally culpable and bound by the shackles of propriety.

“I want you,” he mumbled just before burying his face into my shoulder, betraying his stoic nature to practically sob with need against me. He wasn’t being dramatic, either. I could feel him pressed against my hip while his fingers continued, urging me towards some kind of satisfaction.

But we both knew that it would never be enough. We could never have enough of one another.

“Take me.”

Spencer buried his fingers into me, drawing out another desperate moan before he used his free hand to cover my mouth. Then, he barely moved, only raising his head just enough that he could look me in my eyes that were barely kept open.

There was no way of really knowing why he had silenced me. While I suspected he mainly didn’t want to end our tryst before it had even really begun, I had another fear that felt like rocks filling my stomach. That maybe he stopped me because he thought this was a mistake. That he didn’t want to cross that line. That he had finally realized that I was nothing but a silly, foolish little girl that had latched onto a man that I could never truly have like he deserved.

I don’t know what Spencer saw in that moment, but he withdrew both hands. His fingers still dragged over my skin, refusing to break completely until it was absolutely necessary. Our bodies were still together, though, and our eyes barely blinked as we waited for something to happen.

But my grip was still solid, with hands woven through brunette locks like vines on a trellis. I pulled him back to me, forcing our lips to join again and hoping that it would prevent our spark from fading with the wind that whipped around the prison he called home.

We didn’t say anything else. Everything that could have been said was already communicated through the way his mouth claimed mine. His hands that had been shy moments before became assertive, tugging the tight fabric of my skirt over my hips.

They didn’t stop there, grabbing hold of me by the top of my thighs and hoisting me against the brick. I heard the rustling of his scrubs, and something about the sound felt like freedom. It felt like a love and understanding that nothing in this universe could have ever torn us from this inevitability.

There was no time to waste, with Spencer lining himself up at my entrance with only a brief hesitation. But I was already nodding fervently, pulling on his hair and trying to bring him closer however I could.

When he did enter me, he did it slowly. He paused every few seconds to feel the way my body begged him for more. I couldn’t tell anymore which of us was the source of the soft sounds of pleasure. It didn’t matter. We were hardly two separate people anymore. And eventually Spencer couldn’t handle the distance, either, slamming into me with what I probably poorly judged as his full force.

I accepted the burn of rough clay and mortar against my back as punishment for indulgence in the highest sin. I would blaspheme whatever gods might exist if it meant I would be held by him for just one moment longer.

“Please, don’t let me go, Spencer,” I pleaded.

He answered my call, pinning me tighter against the building and forcing himself as deeply as he could into me. I could feel every inch of him; every minute detail of skin. Each pulse of our hearts as they desperately tried to catch one another to create a harmony. But even that feeling was overwhelmed by his teeth digging into the sensitive flesh above my collarbone.

I swallowed the scream in my throat as best I could, letting out a small sob in exchange.

“I won’t ever let you go,” he murmured against the bruise he’d just left in his wake, “I’ll never let you go ever again.”

The fire that burst through my veins at the low, rolling tone still paled in comparison to the friction between my legs. He had grown ruthless, with an undeniable passion in each movement. His hips slammed into mine hard enough that I could feel his protruding hip bones against me.

“You’re _mine_ ,” he growled, the possessiveness in his actions bleeding through the word.

Although my hands were still rooted through brown curls, he was the one who commanded me to face the fury behind his eyes. The absolute desire to claim my body and mold it so that it would only recognize him.

Yet I still had the audacity to ask, “What do you mean?”

“What I said,” he answered with an anger directed entirely on me. Forcing me harder against the brick until my lungs couldn’t be afforded any extra space, he bit down on my lip and buried himself inside of me before he enunciated the next three words with thrusts that bordered on painful. 

“ _You are_ ** _mine_**.”

There was no room for argument, and I didn’t want to, anyway. I had already handed him every part of me. I had opened my soul to him the first time he looked at me. I needed him to feel that he had me. Through whatever trials and tribulations and whatever storm was brewing in the silvery sky.

Spencer Reid would have me. He always had.

So when I felt the way his stance faltered and his nails dug into my skin, I didn’t shy away from him. I only pulled him closer. The both of us were nothing but frenzied breath and pained hearts, meeting in the only place we could. Throwing ourselves into the shadows and trusting one another to hold us together while we tried to fall apart.

As he filled me with his release, I felt an equal catharsis. I clung to him with both hands and my whole heart. I held him every way I could, begging him not to leave even when we both knew the moment had passed. We stayed together even when sweaty, heated skin turned into chills down our spines. Even the sun came out to scold us for taking too much, for feeling too deeply without regard for the temporary nature of shadows.

Wordlessly, we broke apart piece by piece until even our hands couldn’t touch anymore. Spencer stood five feet behind me, pacing after me with a paradoxical pain and joy radiating from him. I selfishly hid his light from the others, afraid that they would recognize the way we’d both changed.

But no one noticed. No one cared to even look our way. I didn’t meet Spencer’s eyes until we were back in the safety of his cell. That was the only time he felt he was able to touch me. And he did, with gentle hands to contrast the bruises. He took my face in his hands and brought his lips to mine with a touch as faint as the distant lily fields of Elysium. When we finally fell away for the final time that day, he still tried to keep me close.

“Please, don’t leave me.”

The words sent shivers through me, with every hair on my body standing at edge. The rawness of his voice threatened to muddle the words, but it didn’t matter because I _felt_ them. I shared his pain and loneliness so intensely that I had to bite my tongue to stop the tears from falling.

Spencer didn’t try to stop his.

“I don’t want to, but I can’t stay.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” he urged, letting calloused fingertips dig into my jaw before he could control himself once more. He tried so hard not to hurt me, but the damage was already done. The sting of nails on skin stretched over bone was nothing compared to the knowledge that he knew how our story had to end.

“They’re coming to check on you,” I explained, taking one of his hands in mine with the hope that it would lessen the blow. “I have to go.”

But I wasn’t satisfied. With more feeling, I kissed him with everything I had left. He should have known it wouldn’t be much. He knew the weight of me he already carried. Spencer kissed me back with that heaviness, chasing my lips until the distance felt final.

“Goodnight, Dr. Reid.”

“Goodbye, lily,” he said.

_Goodbye_.

——————————————————

I never stopped feeling Spencer’s hands. Then again, I hadn’t really tried to. I would scrub my skin lighter, fearful that I might speed up the process of my body renewing and creating something that hadn’t been touched by him. It was a silly thought, really. I knew that even if I never saw him again and lifetimes passed, my cells would remember him. My nerves would remember the man who sparked them with something as simple as two syllables.

_Lily_.

It was the only name I could respond to anymore. I heard him calling it each time I smelled the earth. My hands started reaching from below umbrellas, hoping to catch the rain like I needed it to live.

I didn’t need the rain, though. I needed him.

“How is Dr. Reid progressing?”

My thoughts shot back to the present, to the unfortunate reality that was sterile white and simple men. I turned to him even though I knew he was speaking to me. It wouldn’t be worth it to wait. He would call me by the name I hardly recognize anymore, anyway.

“Wonderfully.” I tried, but my answer still sounded too smitten. I could only hope that the man was stupid enough to mistake my overwhelming admiration as arrogance on my part. But his quirked brow and crooked frown told me it wasn’t working like I’d hoped.

“He’s talking a lot now,” I blurted out, “I-I think he might actually be able to have a decent quality of life here.”

My colleague just stared. His eyes narrowed in a way Spencer’s never did. Because he had to work to see the truth, to try to decipher my feelings that drove us to this uncomfortable encounter.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. As if he would ever understand.

“Hm? Nothing.”

“You’re shaking.” He gestured to my hand balled tightly around my pen.

“I’m just a little cold. You know how I am.”

Once again, his eyes scrutinized every inch of my awkward, lopsided expression. Then, with even more apprehension, he drew out the words like I wouldn’t be able to understand them if he didn’t, “Are you _sure_ you’re fine having him as a patient?”

I wanted to respond, but the words got caught. Even after I cleared my throat, everything sounded too dry and strained to be convincing.

“Yes, of course. He’s an exemplary patient.”

Now entirely convinced that I was full of it, his words and his eyes became more intense in their insistence.

“I’m not talking about him.”

But my body reacted violently to the implication that Spencer was too much for me. That he would be better with someone else. Like anyone would understand him the way I could. I don’t mean that to sound arrogant; it was just the plain truth of the matter. Call it by whatever name you must, but Spencer and I were bound by something deeper than I’d ever felt before. An undying need to be near him in whatever way possible, no matter the barriers that lay between us.

I couldn’t say any of that, though. I said the only thing I could.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you?” he said again.

So I repeated with finality, “Yes.”

“Alright. Let me know if that changes.”

That was enough to earn his surrender, if only for a little while. That would be enough for me to hopefully figure out how to juggle the weight of two hearts beating in my chest.

I just needed time. Time would be enough.

——————————————————

The clouds were too heavy to hang in the sky. They joined us on the ground, refusing to allow even the faintest foresight at the time when I needed it most.

I’d come to a decision, but it felt horribly wrong. It made my guts twist and my ribs chatter with quick but tired breaths. I couldn’t tell if the fog had actually followed me inside the building or if my body was choosing to deprive itself of oxygen to punish me for my own actions.

All I knew was that nothing felt real. The cold metal of his door burned my hand, once again reminding me of how starkly different our worlds were. The door opened with little resistance, but the creaking echoed in every corner. One final warning of the storm that was coming.

“Dr. Reid?”

Spencer made no attempt to answer. As far as he was concerned, my uttering of his honorific never bode well.

“I need to talk to you.”

The only response provided was the somewhat more aggressive clacking of puzzle pieces into their predetermined place. And as I stared at his back, I recalled the last words he’d said to me. When I had said goodnight, he had chosen to say goodbye. Like he really had the ability to have seen this coming.

But he didn’t. This was my decision, and if he really did see it coming, then why wouldn’t he have stopped me? Unless he had reached the same conclusion as me and had been simply counting down the minutes to this moment. This terrible, excruciating moment of two stubborn people incapable of meeting each other’s eyes.

So then why was it when I spoke, the piece he was holding fell from his fingers?

“I’m preparing the paperwork to switch from being your psychiatrist.”

It sounded so loud in the silence. I swore I could hear his breath, although it had been feeling like that for a long time now, no matter the distance between us. Some nights I would lay awake in my own bed with eyes glued to the ceiling, counting the tiles that lined his room.

But there, in that moment, he’d never felt farther away.

After a brief increase in pitch and rhythm, Spencer’s breath evened out once again, leaving him to continue to make sense of the mess in front of him like I had never been there at all. I think he would have preferred it that way, too. I could feel the stifled rage and regret filling the room, although it was impossible to tell which of our hearts was the source.

“My primary concern has always been your well-being. I-I want you to know that,” I stuttered through the thick air of contempt he felt for me. When even that plea amounted to nothing, I tried harder, forcing my voice to continue with a higher decibel like a sad attempt at authority would ever sway him.

“Please, look at me.”

He didn’t. He didn’t move at all. His hand stayed suspended in the air just like it had before lowering over mine. Except this time, I wasn’t there. So, he just stayed, paralyzed by the shape of his shadow over cardboard and wood.

But when I took a step forward, he moved, too. His hand slammed down on the table in a blatant warning of what would happen if I continued. It should have scared me, but the only thing I could feel was anger.

How could he think that this was easy? As if I hadn’t spent every second away from him weighing the consequences?

Eventually, when the echoes of his display faded away, I replaced the sound with a sharp but broken cry, “I’m just doing what I think is best for both of us, Spencer.”

Then, like the dam had broken and the statue of the man I loved had come back to life in the rushing flood, Spencer turned to me.

“An interesting choice,” he said, clear as golden hazel eyes that tore through me. But then they flickered away again, like he couldn’t stand to see me anymore. Choosing to look at the broken pieces before him instead of the one standing at his door.

“What?” I asked, no longer able to feign any dominance or confidence. Conversely, Spencer never seemed surer than when he answered. Almost perfectly stoic, but not quite, with just enough emotion bleeding through and cracking the words.

“For that to be your first lie.”

And I was grateful then that my hands were tucked away in my pockets. I didn’t want him to see them turn to fists, regardless of whether or not he could hear my lungs pause or feel my heart beat harder in my chest. If he needed a villain, I would let him have me.

He didn’t deserve to shoulder the blame. Not again. It wasn’t his fault. 

“I’ll be switching you to Dr. Roberts. He’s good at his job. He won’t fail you like I did,” I muttered, drawing a hand free to grab hold of the door and usher myself out. To leave him behind and let him hate me like he probably always should have.

But then he called to me again, softly but surely. Just like the first time he’d deemed me his favorite spring flower.

“ _My regrets follow you to the grave_ ,” he said. 

And like before, I turned to find him watching my departure with sorrowful eyes that denoted volumes of pain beyond simple aggression. The kind of pain that made my skin crawl and sent shivers down my spine.

That look that felt like an embrace I would never experience again. 

“That’s the flower you chose for me.”

We stayed like that, mulling over how flowers and fate never quite worked out for us. We soaked in the knowing stares of one another until we could swallow our pride and accept that it had to be this way. That this poisonous passion was too sinful for broken creatures like us.

“Goodbye, Spencer,” I said when he finally looked away. 

“Goodnight lily,” he replied.

When the door clicked shut that time, I felt one heartbeat less in my chest. 

——————————————————

The weather was perfect on my first day back at work. The two weeks I’d taken off were unexpected and unplanned, but that didn’t stop the weather from souring. From forcing me to feel my mistakes through drenched socks and damp hair.

I wanted to enjoy the rain, but it only made me think of him. The smell of the soaked pollen reminded me of the days we stared out the window and imagined a life for him outside the prison walls.

It made sense that the sun would shine when I made my way back to him. At least, I thought that’s what I was doing. But as soon as I arrived at the hospital, I felt the dread set in my veins before I ever even looked in his direction.

I wanted to go to him. I wanted him to be confronted with my presence. I wanted to see if he could tell something had changed within me. I needed to see if his heartbeat still sounded in my ears and if his eyes would still hold me from the other side of the room.

I needed to see if he still needed me the way I needed him.

But I didn’t. Something in my gut kept me away. A visceral fear and understanding that I couldn’t see him yet. The time wasn’t right.

Yet I got the feeling that he had been watching me since the moment I entered the doors. I wrote it off as a natural byproduct of being surrounded by him. There was no running from the smell of state issued soap and the faint echo of Tchaikovsky’s melodies that had permeated through the walls.

Those songs that only got louder when I opened my mail to find the VHS tape we’d joked about together. That hard piece of plastic and polypropylene film might as well have been a knife in my chest.

I should have never left him. I should have never run from him.

So why was I doing it again?

There was no logical answer. Nothing about us made sense. It was purely instinctual, animalistic. Fated.

I shouldn’t have fought my heart. It was always going to win. He was always going to have me, whether I wanted him to or not.

And I did. I wanted him more than a desert rain or break in the current dragging me to sea. I wanted him so badly that I was ready to give my last breath if it meant he would hold me without remembering the way I’d broken his heart. But Spencer remembered. He would never forget. All that I could do was beg for his forgiveness.

Sunny days aren’t known for forgiveness. There was too much light shining on imperfections. My selfishness and voracity. I couldn’t say that I was sorry when he could see the hunger in my eyes. So, I had to wait. Until when, I wasn’t sure.

Perhaps tomorrow would be better, I thought as I sounded the familiar chime of my car that signaled the end of the day and safety from the storm that remained locked in the building beside me.

But the air felt cold. Despite being shrouded in the shadow of the garage, the sun still cowered further behind clouds the closer I got to leaving him again. My steps slowed down and the hair on the back of my neck rose. I stared at the burnt out bulb that still hung in its rightful place above my car. I let the feeling ripple over my skin and filled hungry lungs.

I marched into the darkness without looking back… until I heard him.

“Lily.”

That was all he’d said. It was all he needed to say. I turned to him immediately, trying and failing to suppress the desperation in my eyes that begged him to close the space between us immediately.

“Spencer.”

And he did. By the time the world stopped rocking from the calamity of our reunion, he was mere inches from my face. He paused there, with his breath fanning over my lips and his hand hovering over my cheek.

I kissed him. I don’t know why. It seemed like the only way to make the pain stop. Chapped lips quickly parted for me, and our tongues met one another in the pocket of heat and need between us.

He didn’t stop himself from touching me then. His hand slid over my jaw and grabbed hold of my hair. It was the easiest way for him to control me. To shove me against my car and force my neck to remained bared to him. His other hand lifted my skirt, and despite all of the fear filling me, I did nothing to dissuade him from taking whatever he needed.

I couldn’t breathe, but I couldn’t stop. Even as a sharp, familiar pain of a needle in muscle shot through my thigh. Even as my body started to fail me, releasing all of the tension and making me fall limp in his arms.

I would have surrendered to him, anyway. He didn’t need to do that, but I understood why he felt he had to. I saw the regret and rage in his eyes when the syringe hit the floor. I felt it in my soul.

“Spenc...”

The last thing I remembered was just how gentle his hands were when he pulled my body closer, whispering words I would never forget.

“ _Why did you have to run?_ ”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Answers lead to more questions, including how the two of them are ever going to make it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: DarkFic. Unsub!Spencer. Kidnapping, chemical and physical restraints, knives/cuts, blood, reproduced/false depiction of a rape scene, DubCon (in that neither party wants to be violent, but both feel it is necessary), tearing clothing, choking, crying during sex, pregnancy discussion, guns, yelling, arguing, murder, death, stabbing, implied threats of assault on a woman

In a way, it felt like I’d been running my whole life. From what, however, I’d never been sure. All I knew was that the first thing I heard when I awoke was the gentle rumble of a car engine, followed by the similar sound of Spencer’s voice.

“Go back to sleep, lily.”

And I listened, accepting the tempting embrace of the nothingness that felt less alone. I breathed in the scent of a familiar fabric and the smell of state issued soap. Within the void of my mind, I found myself dancing with empty arms but a heart that was full, drunk on the embrace that wasn’t even there. Yet I still heard his laughter and felt his hair slipping between my fingers.

But when I woke again, I found nothing of the sort. I found an otherwise empty bed and a painful silence, a truer nothingness in a room that had nothing I recognized. I lifted my hands only to realize that they’d been bound with the same zip ties I’d used on patients dozens of times.

“Spencer?”

The man emerged from where he had been standing, just outside of my vision on the other side of the door. He said nothing, but his eyes tore into me like the claws of a feral beast, ragged nails digging deep until blood seeped through my skin and left me raw and defenseless to his whims.

Still, I found the courage to ask, “Where are we?”

“That’s your first question?” His voice was tainted with animosity, condescension, and an anger that twisted my gut. Despite the hostility, he stalked closer, standing just outside of my reach as I struggled to swing my legs out from under the blankets.

“I don’t need to ask you what you’ve done,” I sighed, “I already know.”

My apathy was not appreciated nor returned. Spencer continued to watch my pathetic display of frailty without any empathy. Only rage. His jaw stayed steeled shut like he knew how badly I needed to hear his voice, that I needed him to remind me how he promised he would never let harm befall me.

When I freed myself from the sheets, I kept my hands in my lap, but my whole body leaned closer to him. I struggled against the ties without thought. I could barely feel any part of me; the pain was a sharp, a distant reminder that this vision was not a vision at all. I was really there, with him, far from the hospital that he’d called home.

Spencer’s eyes finally broke from the stare, dropping to my wrists as they stayed steady in their attempt to escape.

“Stop,” he begged with a broken voice, “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

I glanced down again, noticing for the first time that I’d rubbed the skin raw. The sight of now red stained plastic hurt more than the actual restraints, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it. If I looked away from my hands, I would have to look at him. I would have to face all of the regretful things I’d done to him.

The wounds I’d given him that couldn’t be fixed with antiseptic and a bandage.

Presenting my hands to him with a head hung low with shame, I whispered, “Will you take them off?”

“No.”

I wasn’t angry at him for it, either. I deserved his distrust, his anger. But it still hurt in a necessary way. The same way I knew that I would have to look him in the eyes eventually.

So I did, raising my head slowly like prey tangled and trapped beneath a tree root. Spencer was waiting for me, mere inches away from my legs dangling off the end of the bed. He stood with hands closed tightly like a fist meant to crush rose petals but caught in the thorns. They were calloused from a lifetime of thickets. Unwilling to bleed.

“Every time I’ve given you a choice,” he started, trying and failing to control the way his voice broke into fragments like a crystal vase on asphalt, “You’ve left me without _any_ hesitation.”

“Oh, Spencer,” I mumbled, unable to project further than the space between us, “I promise you that’s not true.”

Sensing the truth in my words, Spencer came undone in front of me. The same way his voice had broken, his body did, too. The exhaustion took over, causing his legs to buckle as he fell to his knees against the hardwood. Tired, angry hands gripped tightly to my skirt, but his head hit my thighs gently.

“Yes, it is,” he ground through his teeth.

With bound hands, I lifted his chin. I brought his eyes back to me and tried to open that avenue we’d had before. I tried to reach past the barriers and into his heart as I croaked through persistent tears, “I have never wanted to leave you, Spencer, and it has _never_ been easy.”

Just as I thought I was getting through to him, though, he was gone. His retreat was so sudden that I struggled to stay upright without him. It only became harder when I noticed that his back was to me. I wondered which was worse, those eyes bleeding betrayal or the disgust he must have harbored to not be able to look at me anymore.

“If you won’t tell me where we are, I need you to answer my second question,” I announced, hoping as I always did that the sound of my voice would lead him back to me, “And I’m begging that you don’t lie to me.”

His reply was immediate and carried with it a powerful foreboding weight.

“Only one of us has lied to the other, lily. And it wasn’t me.”

He continued staring at the door, almost like he was considering whether it was best to just leave me there alone. Shackled in a room like he had been, abandoned by the only person he could call his. That thought hit me heavy, like a closed fist to the stomach where my hands clutched despite the ties.

“What did you use to sedate me?”

That was all it took for Spencer’s fury to fall from his shoulders. Every wall he’d carefully built collapsed around him. He turned to me with an utterly perplexed, frozen stare.

He didn’t ask me why. He hadn’t questioned the importance of the knowledge because he didn’t need to. I watched as Spencer’s eyes landed on my stomach, and his face shifted through what felt like thousands of emotions.

“I need to know,” I pleaded once again.

“Wait…”

“W-Will it hurt me?” I paused to swallow tears that were only growing more insistent with each attempt to keep them at bay, “Will the drug— will it cause any problems?”

Once he could tear his gaze away, half of those elusive emotions faded instantly. They were replaced with an even greater hostility.

“Since when?” he said as he took one step forward.

“That’s a stupid question.”

“No, it’s not. Answer it.”

It was my turn to be angry. The implication filled me with feelings I didn’t even know I was capable of holding. A bitter venom seeping from my skin like stinging nettle.

“How _dare_ you imply that, Spencer.”

“Answer the question,” he spat, loud enough that his veins strained from the force. He took another step forward, his hand shooting forward and roughly grabbing my chin that still tried to move through the crushing resistance of his fingers.

“I’m not Catherine. I wouldn’t—!”

“ _ **Answer the goddamn question**_!”

I froze, my mouth hung open and the chords paralyzed. The sound of his scream echoed in the room, and each iteration was just as painful as the first. I saw the regret in his eyes, but it was so overshadowed by the hurt that I couldn’t tell if he’d even felt it at all.

“You are the only man that I’ve been with in months,” I said, calmly and quietly like I could lull him back from the brink, “It’s yours.”

But the anguish and remorse grew, swallowing the fury and replacing it with a more palatable pain. A vulnerability that I’d only seen from him once before.

He had been crying then, too.

“If you’re lying to me…”

“You _know_ that I’m not,” I replied, bringing both hands up to his that remained with a bruising force against my jaw. As my fingertips touched him, I felt his heart change. His head dropped forward against mine, but he stayed standing. He maintained that distance, that dominance as he struggled to find his voice.

“It won’t… It won’t terminate a pregnancy, no.”

We stayed just like that, building memories of blurry visages in the dim morning light. My tears dried, but his continued, changing in consistency and heaviness every few moments. Eventually, he asked the question I’d seen sitting on his tongue for some time now.

“Is that why you left me?”

It took me a moment to understand what he’d meant. Because I’d done that horrible thing again — expecting him to know the administrative workings of the prison guards. Of my own thoughts from miles away.

“I didn’t.”

His eyes shot up, and he took a defensive step back as he asked, “What?”

Sensing that he was going to correct me, to accuse me of manipulating him into believing something that wasn’t true, I gave my explanation as quickly as possible.

“I shredded the papers. I changed my mind.”

“Were you… going to tell me?” he asked, the regret finally fighting its way through, “Were you going to tell me that you were pregnant?”

“Eventually.”

He didn’t like that answer. He hid his face behind his hands that wiped at tired eyes. Urging them to hold back the tears the way they had for the years before me.

“I’m sorry, Spencer. It caught me off guard, I wasn’t expecting it to happen. But when it did, I couldn’t…”

I reached out to him, and to my surprise, he followed. Still ever so cautious and careful, he let my bound hands grab hold of his shirt and guide him back to me.

“I couldn’t leave you,” I whispered.

Spencer’s hands touched me differently. With a trembling that carried nostalgia for the first time. Hands held over puzzle pieces and kisses shared only between the two of us and Tchaikovsky’s memory.

They started at my thighs, smoothing through the wrinkles he’d created and slowly ascending over my arms. His gaze trailed behind, waiting until the last moment, when he cradled damp cheeks between his palms, to look me in the eyes.

“I missed you so much, Spencer.”

He held his breath when he came closer, pausing at the last second to see if I would take the initiative to close the gap. Testing to see if my love was truly as compelling as I made it sound.

And it was. It brought the two of us together like magnets. The longer we stayed connected, the more out of control things became. I was completely at his mercy, just as I’d always wanted to be. I let him take whatever he needed from me, shuddering but not pulling away when his teeth sunk into my bottom lip. His thumb chased after the swollen skin he’d left in his wake. I could tell he had so much he needed to say, but the words were stuck.

“You have to believe me,” I begged, “Nothing I’ve said was a lie.”

With a sad little nod, Spencer looked away from me and down to his ankle. That time when he fell to his knees, it felt less like breaking and more like coming home. Like finding peace in a church pew after a lifetime of sin.

It was a strange, unnerving calmness. The same feeling of storms brewing in my chest, my breath shifting as I watched him pull a blade from a holster hidden underneath his pants and slide it between my wrists.

“Please, don’t leave me,” he pleaded, the words barely comprehensible through the tears, “ _Please._ ”

The sound of snapping plastic signaled our coming together again. My arms found their way to him before the knife even hit the bed. He raised from his knees, enthusiastically returning my embrace with everything he had left.

It was everything. A tidal wave of rain and catharsis following the stifling drought. My free hands held him, leading his lips to mine like they had always meant to be. To be together, to be one.

How long had we been this two-headed creature? It felt like a lifetime but couldn’t have been more than a couple months. Those months were everlasting, though. The bloom following the last bitter frost. The colorful sprouts bursting from soil soaked by the ice, winter’s final kiss farewell.

Spencer’s hands grew restless, too, as roots often did. I thought nothing of it until they were fists, filled with the wrinkled fabric of my dress. Before I could pause and break our mouths apart, his hands tore into separate directions. The force alone made me gasp, the only audible sound beyond the clattering of the buttons that had popped off in the chaos.

I froze, my mind replaying the last time I’d seen him before now, with his hand slamming down on the wooden desk littered with puzzle pieces. For only the briefest second, I wondered if that was all this was — his desire to break or brutalize whatever he could to avoid hurting me.

But then I looked at him. I frantically looked up to find his eyes staring down at my exposed bra as if he’d done something horrible. His vice-like grip on my dress hadn’t loosened, but now held the fabric down against the bed.

“Spencer…”

He still didn’t look at me, and I suspected it was because he knew that he would see the fear in my eyes. The nagging suspicion that a madman could never truly rid himself of the desire to ruin every beautiful thing.

When Spencer’s hands did release my dress, his whole body pulled back, too. He towered over me on his knees, and I saw how hard his chest heaved with every breath.

I was so distracted by the tension and terror clearly displayed over his face that I failed to notice the way he’d picked up the knife once more. But while he stared at the shimmering metal, I never stopped looking at him.

“Spencer,” I repeated, this time without fear. For however much of it I lacked, the man in front of me carried more than enough for the both of us.

I’d never seen Spencer shake, but he did then. His hand was trembling so hard that I was convinced he would drop the weapon back into the bedsheet. Blanched knuckles remained fit tightly around the handle as he finally muttered, “I’m so sorry.”

“Spencer, look at me,” I called, reaching out to him with two steady hands that cradled his face like he was made of scratched and cracked porcelain on the brink of shattering.

So many people had failed to handle him with the care he required.

Even himself. Especially himself.

“I understand,” I whispered, hearing the words before I thought them, “It’s okay.”

“I have to—I-I…“

The words hurt him too much to say. To admit that anyone thought him capable of such a thing.

_I have to make them think I hurt you_.

“I know. It’s okay,” I reassured him of what he thought to be impossible. That I could hear his thoughts the same way I felt my own heart beating in my chest. The same way that I could feel the cold side of the blade resting against the heated skin of my thigh.

“Kiss me again,” I pleaded, but he couldn’t bring himself to let our lips meet.

“I would _never_ hurt you,” he insisted, choking through tears that had never stopped falling, “Everything I do is only to protect you.”

But I never doubted him. I needed him to finally trust that our souls had been intertwined for long before we met. That I had spent my entire life seeking out the other half of my heart. And I had found him, equally lost and wandering within the bleached white walls of the sanitarium.

We weren’t there anymore, though. Fate had carried us this far — and I wasn’t ready to fight it yet. I would ride the waves brought on by the storm until I was either swept away in the undertow or torn apart by the landing. I would let myself bask in the feel of saltwater covering my skin because I knew that I would be destroyed either way.

“I want this,” I cried softly, taking his hand in my own as if the weapon had never come between us. Because it hadn’t; not to me. I helped him slide the blade under fabric that I was more than happy to rid myself of.

I would sacrifice so many things for him. My sanity, my stature, my soul. They were meaningless to me if they would cost me his company.

“I love you,” I told him, trusting the words to express the way my ribs ached.

Still, he hesitated.

“Don’t lie to me,” he muttered, his voice sounding like lightning. It spread through me just like that, too. It commanded each hair to stand at attention, drawing my muscles together so that they would bring me closer to him.

With one hand on the weapon and the other resting softly on his face, I repeated with everything that I could, “I love you.”

For the briefest moment, the tears paused. They stalled along his lashes the same way the clock on the wall seemed to stutter. Time and sense falling to pieces with all hope that remained for me.

“I love you more than anything else in this rotten world. I would leave it all behind in an instant.”

I saw the entire spectrum of human emotion flashing through his eyes. Every word was absorbed with an uncanny understanding, almost like he could predict them but was still shocked to hear them uttered at all.

“I only want you,” I promised, “That’s all I need.”

Spencer’s answer came as a bizarre pressure and the sound of fabric tearing. The little bit of sunlight that filtered through the window caught along the blade and blinded me momentarily, just long enough for me to miss his reaction when I gasped by instinct at heated skin meeting the ambient air.

The next time I felt the knife, he was unassisted in his destruction. I pulled my arms back, opening myself as his canvas for him to color however he needed. The first splash of color came on accident. A line of speckled red peeking through skin that had gotten caught in the crossfire.

Before he could apologize or feel anything at all, my fingers found their way back into hair wild from the wind and his own hands. I forced our mouths to meet harshly enough that our teeth knocked together. There was no more room for gentleness; life required us to take - to be greedy and chaotic and raw.

Spencer only took his hands off of me for long enough to disrobe. Yet when they did find me again, I still felt the resistance. His hands dragging hard but slow, settling only on areas that could withstand the pressure.

I felt his erection against my leg, and no matter how badly I wanted to close my eyes, to lose myself in the feeling, I knew he needed me. We locked eyes as he pressed himself against my heat, watching each other for the faintest sign of doubt. I knew that he was looking for an out, an excuse to let me go, but he found none.

_Take me_ , was all he could find. _Take me and make me yours_.

_Forever._

A jolt of pain not unlike the knife shot through me as his hips snapped forward. The sudden intrusion and sheer power behind the movement caused my entire body to contract around him, pulling him down with a loud cry he didn’t even try to stifle. His lips instead pressed kisses against my temple, careful to avoid the tears the action sparked in my eyes.

He moved again before I could even register the full effects of the first time, somehow forcing himself deeper inside of me. It was so unlike the first time in so many ways, but I couldn’t bring myself to hate any of them. Because no matter how much it burned between my legs, all I could think was that I was lucky to share this body with him again.

I was so lucky to be able to hear him this time as he whispered into my ear.

“ _I love you, lily._ ”

“Spencer,” I called back, surprised to hear the warbling timbre from the tears.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured against the skin, and the vibrations felt like a balm over the wounds inflicted, “You’re safe here.”

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t only talking to me. He was trying to convince himself that he was safe, too. That he was still loved despite the brutality. As if he’d ever wanted to do it in the first place.

I supposed there was a chance that he did, but I didn’t want to accept that reality. Even if it were true, I never wanted to see him as a monster. He would always be a lily to me.

I clung to the image of a white lily crown plucked from the meadows of death. I imagined them covering the room and the smell of copper blood and salty sweat. It didn’t take long before my body recognized him as an extension of itself again. His movements were no longer harsh and unforgiving, aided by the mixture forming between our legs.

It had started to feel only beautiful again. The noises rolling through my throat and over my tongue sounded like praise instead of prayer, and when his hand wrapped around my neck, I didn’t gasp. I let his nails take root in the skin, pulsing with hesitation as he tried to gather the strength to hurt me once more.

But then he stopped, burying himself in me and dropping his hand down to my sternum and pressing down hard, trying to create distance between us where none was meant to be.

“I can’t do it,” he forced the words out, unable to look me in the eyes again, “I-I can’t hurt you anymore. I don’t want to do it.”

He’d never sounded more like a child. More vulnerable and honest and pure. I wondered if that was how he saw himself when he collapsed against my chest, burying his face into the crook of the neck he’d just marked with half-moons.

“I love you,” he sobbed, “Please, don’t stop loving me.”

There was nothing I could say to convince him. There was nothing else that I could give him to assure him, to conclusively prove that my swear was solemn. I lifted his face in my hands and brought him to my lips, unable to find any other way to say the words I needed him to believe.

_There is not a universe in existence where I would stop loving you_.

When he pulled away, he kept his eyes closed and his breathing ragged. He pressed his forehead into mine like he could hear the thoughts filling my mind.

“Love me as I love you,” I whispered aloud in case he couldn’t hear, “I will love you forever, my lily.”

_You will carry all of our regrets to the grave, and from there I will carry you to our own Elysium_.

He pulled back, but our souls stayed together.

_I will hold you in ash filled fields and keep you warm enough that the sparks will feel like snow_.

With his hands on my hips, Spencer forced me forward and canted my hips to him. From there, large hands covered my stomach. They smoothed over the skin that hadn’t yet shown signs of tearing from the life within, but I knew that he could feel it, nonetheless.

_Not even the gods can stop us from finding our peace, together_.

Spencer stayed focused there, watching himself disappear inside of me. Feeling the full force of my surrender. Recognizing for the first time that there was no fear or worry in my weary body.

_We will be. Together, we will be._

“I told you that you were mine,” he said with eyes burning bright and leading me through the darkness, “Now everyone will know.”

“Yes,” I called, breaking him free from the shadows he’d spent so many years navigating, “Yes, I’m yours, Spencer.”

Freed from the crushing doubt, his body moved freely and wildly. The sound of wetness and skin crashing together filled the room, but it was a background, a beating metronome to the way I sang him every wordless praise. My hands lost in sheets tainted with blood and tears until he took them, locking our fingers together above my head.

His face hung above me and he watched with half-lidded eyes as I started to fall apart. The rhythm of our bodies grew faster even as I tensed and arched into him. I couldn’t keep my eyes open, but I felt his remain, memorizing the moment to relive it for the both of us for an eternity.

I opened my eyes just in time to watch as he found the same euphoria. I caught the way the relief filled the golden halos of his eyes at the same time his releases flooded through me. My body greedily took everything he could give, knowing that it wasn’t necessary. I had already created life from him, but I wanted more. My body craved him.

I craved him, being his. I was his. Covered and filled with his body, caught in an embrace that I could never completely wrestle free from again. Carrying a piece of him that I would forever keep.

And it felt wrong in the worst way. To know that this bed we shared would be deemed a crime scene. It would be swarmed with investigators and forensics teams who were all already hellbent on spinning the narrative that the man who held me so gently was nothing but a monster. Irredeemable and disturbed. Evil.

But there was nothing even close to resembling hatred in that moment. There was no darkness in his eyes that were so tired but refused to close, knowing that it meant leaving us vulnerable. He clung to me like heavy clothing soaked by the rain.

“You know we can’t keep running.”

Spencer’s jaw once again steeled tight at the sound of those words on my tongue. His hands, too, grew in their insistence to stay exactly as we were. I didn’t regret the words so much as all of the circumstances that led to them having to be said.

“Why not?”

“They’ll find you. And if you don’t let me take you back, they might…” my voice broke, dangling on the notes and lacking the air and strength they required, “They might take you away from me for good this time.”

“No.”

That was all he said, but he tore himself away from me as he did. He was a mile away within a minute, dressing himself in clothes I didn’t recognize. He wouldn’t look at me, unable to bear even the sound of his name on my tongue.

“Spencer, please.”

“No, no one is taking you from me. I meant what I said. I won’t let you go.”

“Then let me take you back,” I begged, but his voice overlapped with mine. It was louder and harder, angrier and angrier, “No. I can’t do that.”

“Spencer, you—”

“Drop it, Lily.”

“—please, listen to me, I just...!”

“ _ **I said no!**_ ”

His teeth were bared and his voice was sharper than the weapon that had cut my skin. My body crumpled in on itself, trying to hide from the rage that overtook him just as it had before. He was nothing more than a wounded animal, licking festering wounds and not letting anyone close enough to clean them.

“Don’t you understand? If I take you back, I won’t be able to see you anymore. I won’t get to be there. I won’t ever get to hold _my child_ ; do you understand that?”

This time when Spencer cried, I didn’t feel that any of those tears were for me. They were selfish, as they had every right to be. All this time, I’d loaded the weight onto already heavy shackles — praising him for being the Atlas that he never should have been.

“They won’t be able to know me,” he wept, “You’ll be alone. _Again_.”

But he was not the only one hurting. Because while he got to be selfish and fantasize a future where everything worked out, I was plagued with the knowledge of what would likely be.

“They’re going to find you and they’re going to kill you, and our child won’t know you then, either!”

“I won’t let that happen,” he spoke like every foolish boy who declared himself a god.

“Spencer, you know they have people trained specifically to find men like you. You were one of them. You know how skilled they are, you know that they always win!”

“They’re all _**fucking dead**_!”

Silence fell over the room once again, complete with stuttering clock hands and thunder crackling in the distance. Spencer accepted my silence as confirmation that he’d won, but I could see that he took no joy in the glory.

How could he?

“I can’t lose another person, lily. You can’t ask me to walk away from two.”

How could I?

“What are we going to do?” I asked, instead. The life came back to him immediately, animating tired arms that found the strength to hold me again. They still felt like home, even on broken skin.

“I have a plan to get us out of the country. After that, we can make a new life.”

“What happens if we can’t get out? What happens if we get separated?” I urged, not because I wanted to dissuade him anymore, but because I needed the answers. “What happens if I lose you?”

“Tell them what they want to hear.”

It was the only answer I was not willing to accept.

“I can’t do that.”

“Yes, you can, lily.”

That time, it was my turn to speak over him. To be loud and rash and speak thoughts not entirely thought out. I spoke with more emotion than he’d ever heard from me before, and I realized in the mess that I’d felt them for so much longer than I knew his hands.

“You’re not a monster. I can’t let them call you that. I can’t let them call this — us, our _family_ — a _mistake_ ,” I wailed before falling back into an unsettlingly calm timbre, “Certainly not a crime.”

My horror and pain were met with tenderness. A lily-soft nature and fingertips still capable of love. Spencer kissed me, reminding me of the terrible hope he always brought with him.

“It won’t happen. I won’t let it happen.”

The worst kind of hope. The kind that made you believe in it.

“I’m so tired,” I whimpered, curling my naked body against him and trusting him to keep me safe against all odds. Knowing that he was the only chance I had at happiness; at being whole and healed. “Please, hold me.”

Spencer did not argue, building walls around me in the shape of his arms and letting his shirt wick away any tears that fell. He spoke to me, something beautiful in a language I didn’t recognize. I didn’t need a translation to feel it, though. My soul knew it was at home, and it freed itself of the tension. It bathed in the tingling aftertaste of blood on my skin and our tears on my lips.

In my dreams, my arms were no longer empty. Spencer held me close, rubbing familiar patterns across my back until he woke me again.

“Come on, lily,” he whispered, “It’s time to go.”

In a way, it felt like I never actually woke up. My mind was still hazy from the sedative and my heart was still too full of everything to let itself feel any more. I moved purely on instinct and his hand. I followed him and did as he instructed, dutifully and without reservation.

It wasn’t until we pulled into an unnamed backroad gas station that I was left alone. Alone with my thoughts just to remember that even in my solitude, I carried him with me. Of course, that reminder arrived in a very unwelcome way. My stomach rolled, my mouth filling with spit and bile before I could fully comprehend what was happening.

I threw the car door open, tumbling out and forward into a room of filthy, cracked porcelain and worn blue vinyl tiles. I dropped to my knees and emptied the contents of an already destitute stomach.

The pain felt like a punishment for poor, wishful thinking. For believing in the hope that Spencer had offered me when I needed it most.

“Well, well, well. Look what I found.”

It wasn’t Spencer’s voice.

“You’ve got a lot of people looking for you, miss.”

It was entirely wrong — gruff and composed of shredded metal. The man it belonged to was sort of like that, too. I could barely see him in the shadow he cast. The sun hanging low behind him offered me no mercy or solace.

“I think you have the wrong person.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” he cooed, “And your answer tells me what I already suspected. The news keeps saying that you were taken, but you looked awful happy with him in that car.”

As if on cue, Spencer’s voice tore through the heavy, humid air.

“Lily!”

I stood at his call, my feet trying to take me to him despite the man who stood between us. Unfortunately, my naivety was once again corrected, the universe using his lungs to laugh and mock how desperately I sought my love on the other side.

“Look who’s coming to join us,” he snickered, taking hold of my hair and using it to push me back into the bathroom. “Should I tell him that you were trying to get away? I bet he wouldn’t like that.”

“Go ahead,” I spat, “He wouldn’t believe you.”

“No? Then I have a better idea.”

I felt the wind biting at sore skin, the side of my face crashing against cold tile before being flanked with the even more frigid barrel of a gun. I smelled rust and regret, gunpowder and grief at the same time that I saw him again.

“Lily—“

His voice cut off at the sight of me clutching my stomach.

“Hello there, Clyde. I’ve got your Bonnie.”

I could feel the atmosphere shifting like the Earth was parting as it did for Persephone. I watched as Spencer’s shoulders squared and his jaw braced itself for the words that would have to follow.

“Let her go.”

“Now why would I do that?” he immediately challenged. A chill shook through my spine, although it wouldn’t be visible through the already existing trembles. “If I let her go, you’ve got no reason to follow my instructions.”

“If you don’t let her go, it won’t matter what instructions you give me,” Spencer all but growled, “I _will_ kill you.”

Butterflies erupted in my stomach that ached from the contradictory emptiness and fullness I felt. I clung to that connection I felt to him, closing my eyes to try and find him in the abyss behind my eyes.

“So scary. How do you expect to do that?”

“If you want my compliance, pissing me off is a pretty stupid way of doing that.” Spencer’s voice echoed to the audience of two, “Killing her would be even stupider.”

“Who said I had to kill her?”

I saw what would happen before I opened my eyes. My hands flattened against the wall as rough, unfamiliar hands gripped hips with fresh wounds left by another. Unlike those, I would wish I could scrub myself free of the bruises left behind.

“I could just rough her up some,” he chimed.

Just before he lunged forward, he heard my voice break through my mouth pressed against the wall.

“Spencer, don’t.”

The other man didn’t appreciate the control I offered to the situation; the way I wielded the unhinged man I’d come with like a weapon of its own.

“Shhh. Let the men talk,” he whispered, pulling me back to crack my head against the tile again. Expecting me to cry and probably simultaneously feeling impressed and disappointed when I didn’t.

Spencer, on the other hand, sounded like he was on the brink of disaster when he spoke, quiet and broken.

“Let her go, and I’ll go with you.”

“Do you think I’m stupid?” the man said through an almost startled laughter.

So one could only imagine his response when Spencer answered, “Yes. In fact, I _know_ you’re stupid.”

I shared in the man’s shock, but only for a second. I couldn’t spare any other thought to the interesting confrontation. Straining my eyes as far as I could, I finally found Spencer’s eyes. They weren’t looking at me, zeroed in on the face of the devil worn by the man behind me.

“Do you want to play a game? It’s very simple. Even someone like you could figure it out,” Spencer taunted, taking a step closer every few seconds, “You just have to guess which one of us is carrying the gun, and whether or not you think you’re a quick enough draw to beat the one who does.”

The longer I heard his voice, the more manageable my heartbeat became. I recalled the feeling of our chests and faces pressed together to listen to the sound of each other’s souls. I heard Tchaikovsky and tilted laughter. I felt phantom hands guiding me in slow motion as I heard him ask the final question.

“Are you ready?”

I found freedom as his hands abandoned me in favor of what he thought was the greater threat.

But he was wrong.

There was no gun.

There was only a knife.

The same cold metal blade that had brought Spencer and I together sunk into the soft stomach behind me. My hand drove it in further than felt possible. As the sound of a shot rang out, bursting and breaking, I twisted until I could hear screams, instead.

Falling back, I noticed the hole torn through the ceiling that crumbled over us. I hit the ground hard enough for my entire vision to rock. In that chaos, I spotted Spencer. The two of them were a mess of limbs that moved too quick to follow. I could barely hear anything but the ringing. I trailed along the pools of blood to try and find the only weapon I’d had.

But I was moving too slowly. I didn’t know what I was doing. The two men slammed onto the ground next to me, and I covered my arms as if I could hide from the destruction. I crawled aimlessly, trying to find my way to freedom and trusting that he would follow me there.

That was when my knee knocked into something hard. Something frozen and glistening red.

I thought of Spencer’s voice. I envisioned how his eyes looked before the first time he said my name. I let myself remember the taste of his tongue and the feel of soft, tangled curls wrapped around my fingers. Although Spencer did not touch me, I felt him guiding me.

I’d never held a gun before I shot one for the first time.

The first thought I had was a question. A need to know how it was possible that something so small could be so heavy. Could be so loud and cold and scorching at the same time. The sound ricocheted against tile and concrete and hit me as hard as the kickback of metal and blood.

“Lily, we have to go.”

The only other thing I could hear was my breath. My own panicked lungs wheezing over Spencer’s much too calm voice, quiet and steady just like his hands that wrapped around my waist to try and lift me from the floor.

“We have to go right now.”

He made it sound so simple. So very obvious and uneventful. But I could see red on white and silver and blue, and I could see what was left of a terrible man. I saw it even as Spencer dragged me out of the building, desperately trying to help me find my feet.

There was nothing else said, but my mind was anything but quiet. It was deafening. Ringing and screaming with sounds I’d never heard so close before.

I still couldn’t stop thinking about how it was possible for something so small to be able to hold so much force. Was it that trickery of physics and sense that made a home in people? Was this the feeling they craved? Of power and hatred and fear? Was this feeling, this unadulterated power and adrenaline, what made monsters?

I felt sick. Sick but not tired like I had felt for months. It was at that point I felt the wetness of my hands for the first time. Wet and cold and warm while Spencer used one hand to clean my hands of the little bit of blood and prying the weapon from my hands.

I didn’t even know I was still holding it. But as soon as I did, it was gone. Clattering to the floor with a startled yelp. I waited for another eardrum shattering sound, but none followed.

Spencer hadn’t even flinched.

He didn’t move at all. His hands on the steering wheel and resting on my wrist were fixed in place like he was more statue than man.

He had been here before.

The nausea rolling in my stomach made the morning sickness feel like a tickle in my now-raw throat. My memories still rang too loud to hear the ambient noise of wheels on the highway asphalt.

“I killed him.”

“It’s okay, lily,” he answered immediately. Stroking his thumb over hands emptied of evil and replaced with the first true sight of freedom, he repeated, “It’s okay.”

The tears could only stall for so long. But he remained steady in his hold, and the reverberating echo of gunshots started to fade enough for me to hear the static of the radio.

“I didn’t want to do that,” I told him. I needed him to hear it, even if he didn’t believe me.

But there was no denying that he did when he whispered back, “I know.”

The sound of his guilt was even worse. Like it was somehow his fault that I’d made the decision. Like he’d failed. But he hadn’t. There was nothing he could have done differently under the circumstances. Nothing except leaving me behind.

“He was going to kill you,” I stated out loud for the first time.

Taking his eyes from the road, Spencer turned to me with a firm hold of my hand. Behind those warm hazel eyes, I saw the futures he’d envisioned. Every terrible image that might have been memorized.

“He didn’t,” he said like we both needed the convincing, “It’s going to be okay.”

“I was so scared,” I cried, breathy and begging for something he couldn’t give. I wanted him to stop the car, to hold me until the world felt real again. But he had to turn away. To return his attention to both the literal and figurative road ahead of us.

“I’m sorry, lily.”

Then, after another deep breath, his hand that held mine let go. He didn’t let it stray far, running up my arm and over the sensitive skin on the back of my neck. I almost smiled at the way it raised in a wave behind him, craving more of his touch. But I couldn’t bring myself to, not until he pulled me closer. And just like magic, my cheek hit his shoulder with a gentleness that contradicted the dead weight I felt.

“We‘re both here,” he said, and I let the vibrations roll through the two of us and spread like butterflies through me.

“I promise you that everything will be okay.”

I believed him. How could I not? My body knew when it had found a home, and in all the chaos, that was the one thing that never waned. That deep, visceral knowledge that we were meant to be together.

Fate, too, in its funny little way, sang praises to our enduring love. Through radio static, the gentle thrum of Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers flowed through the air. The sound alone brought me back to the first time he touched me in a dust covered prison cell. But as the song continued, I smelled the petrichor and dogwood petals, and I realized that there was nothing holding us back anymore.

“Do you know why I picked the lily of the valley?”

I opened my eyes to find Spencer stealing quick glances of the contented half-smile that had graced my lips.

“You told me that I was poisonous.”

With his knuckles once again brushing over my cheek, Spencer didn’t hold back from chuckling as he explained, “You are. The lily of the valley has over 40 different cardiac glycosides. So not only are you poisonous, but you are also a _heartbreaker_ , my lily.”

I almost laughed, having already forgotten the ugly scenes left behind. Because that was what they were — behind us. Over. Done. A necessary sacrifice to have found our way here, equally culpable and dedicated to something new.

Then, with a similar cleansing sound, Spencer looked away and sighed, “But that’s not why, either.”

“Tell me!”

I saw the way he smirked, eyes facing forward, not at the road, but out beyond it the horizon. And I followed him, gazing at the endless sea of gold and peach shades. But even that simple beauty paled in comparison to the prismatic arch that broke through the remaining storm clouds. The reflection of the setting sun behind us to signal the end of the rain and the start of a world cleansed of the putrescence of the past.

Spencer waited until our eyes met again. Until I could see the reflection of my soul in his and know that I was home among the lilies.

“They represent ‘ _the return to happiness_ ,’” he said, “That’s what you are.”


End file.
